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Monster House (film)
Monster House is a 2006 American 3D computer-animated family horror comedy film directed by Gil Kenan, produced by ImageMovers and Amblin Entertainment, and distributed by Columbia Pictures about a neighborhood that's being terrorized by a demonic house. The film stars Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Catherine O'Hara, Kathleen Turner, and Fred Willard. Executive produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, this is the first time since Back to the Future Part III that they have worked together. It is also the first time that Zemeckis and Spielberg both served as executive producers of a film. The film's characters are animated primarily utilizing performance capture, making it the second film to use the technology so extensively, following Zemeckis' The Polar Express. Monster House received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed over $140 million worldwide. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 79th Academy Awards, but lost to Happy Feet. Plot The parents of twelve-year-old DJ Walters leave town for the weekend, leaving him in the care of Zee. DJ has been spying on his elderly neighbor Horace Nebbercracker, who confiscates any item landing in his yard. After DJ's best friend Charles "Chowder" loses his basketball on Nebbercracker's lawn, DJ is caught by Nebbercracker trying to recover it, but the enraged owner apparently suffers a heart attack and is taken away by an ambulance. That night, DJ receives phone calls from the house with no one on the other end. Eavesdropping on Zee's boyfriend Bones, DJ hears him tell Zee about losing his kite on Nebbercracker's lawn when he was a child and that Nebbercracker supposedly ate his wife. Later, Bones sees his kite in the doorway of Mr. Nebbercracker's house, but he is consumed by the house while retrieving it. The next morning, a girl named Jenny Bennett is selling Halloween candy. DJ and Chowder see her going to Nebbercracker's house and rush out to catch her before she is eaten by it. Jenny calls the police but is not believed. The trio seek advice from Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, supposedly an expert on the supernatural. They learn that the house is a rare monster created when a human soul merges with a man-made structure and that it can only be killed by destroying its heart. They conclude that the heart must be the furnace and Chowder provides a cold medicine-filled dummy that should cause the house to sleep long enough for them to douse the furnace. Police Officers Landers and Lester thwart their plan and they are arrested when Landers finds the cold medicine stolen from Chowder's father's pharmacy inside the dummy. When the officers go to examine the house, it eats them and the car in which DJ, Chowder and Jenny have been shut. When the house falls asleep, the kids begin exploring. In the basement they find a collection of toys accumulated from Nebbercracker's lawn, as well as a door that opens to a shrine containing the body of Nebbercracker's wife Constance the Giantess, encased in cement. The house realizes they are inside and attacks them. DJ, Chowder and Jenny force the house to vomit them outside by grabbing its uvula. Nebbercracker arrives home alive, revealing that Constance's spirit is within the house and that he did not eat her but instead had given her some of the happiest times in her life. As a young man, he met Constance, then an unwilling member of a circus freak show, and fell in love with her despite her obesity. After he helped her escape, they began building the house. One Halloween, as children tormented her due to her size, Constance tried chasing them away but lost her footing and fell to her death in the basement. Nebbercracker had finished the house, knowing it was what she would have wanted but, aware that Constance's spirit made the house come alive, he pretended to hate children so as to keep them away. DJ tells Nebbercracker it is time to let Constance go, but the house overhears this. Enraged, it breaks free from its foundation and chases the group to a construction site. Nebbercracker attempts to distract the house so he can dynamite it, but the house notices and attacks him. Chowder fights it off with an excavator and DJ is given the dynamite. While Chowder distracts the house, DJ and Jenny climb to the top of a crane and DJ throws the dynamite into the chimney causing the house to explode. The trio then see Nebbercracker with Constance's ghost before she fades away. DJ apologizes to Nebbercracker for the loss of his house and wife, but Nebbercracker thanks the kids for freeing him from being trapped for 45 years. That night, children in their Halloween costumes are lined up at the site of the house, where DJ, Chowder and Jenny help return the toys to their owners. Jenny's mother picks her up and DJ and Chowder go trick-or-treating, which they previously felt they were too old for. Those who were eaten by the house emerge from the basement. Cast * Mitchel Musso as Dustin J. "DJ" Walters, a 12-year-old boy * Sam Lerner as Charles "Chowder", DJ's best friend * Spencer Locke as Jenny Bennett, DJ's love interest * Steve Buscemi as Mr. Horace Nebbercracker, a 72-year-old former US Army "demolition squad" expert * Maggie Gyllenhaal as Elizabeth "Zee", DJ's punk babysitter * Kevin James as Officer Landers, a police officer * Nick Cannon as Officer Lester, a police officer * Jason Lee as Bones, Zee's punk rocker boyfriend * Jon Heder as Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, a videogame-crazed comic geek and expert on the supernatural * Kathleen Turner as Constance "The Giantess" Nebbercracker, a 675-pound woman who was featured against her will in a circus' freak show in the mid 1940s * Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard as Mr. and Mrs. Walters, DJ's overprotective parents Production Performance capture The film was shot using performance capture, in which the actors performed the characters' movement while linked to sensors. This process was pioneered by Robert Zemeckis on his film The Polar Express, also produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks. Digital 3-D version As with The Polar Express, a stereoscopic 3-D version of the film was created and had a limited special release in digital 3-D stereo along with the "flat" version. While The Polar Express was produced for the 3-D IMAX 70mm giant film format, Monster House was released in approximately 200 theaters equipped for new REAL D Cinema digital 3-D stereoscopic projection. The process was not based on film, but was purely digital. Since the original source material was "built" in virtual 3-D, it created a very rich stereoscopic environment. For the film's release, the studio nicknamed it Imageworks 3D. Reception Monster House grossed $73,661,010 in the United States and Canada, and $66,513,996 overseas, for a worldwide total of $140,175,006. The film received generally positive reviews from critics. Based on 158 reviews collected by review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored a 74% approval rating, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Monster House welcomes kids and adults alike into a household full of smart, monstrous fun." Ian Freer, writing for Empire, gave the film 4 out of 5 stars with the verdict, "A kind of Goonies for the Noughties, Monster House is a visually dazzling thrill ride that scales greater heights through its winning characters and poignantly etched emotions. A scary, sharp, funny movie, this is the best kids’ flick of the year so far." Jane Boursaw of Common Sense Media also gave it 4 out of 5 stars and wrote, "This is one of those movies where all the planets align: a top-notch crew (director Gil Kenan; executive producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis), memorable voices that fit the characters perfectly; and a great story, ingenious backstory, and twisty-turny ending." Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel''wrote, "This ''Monster House is a real fun house. It's a 3-D animated kids' film built on classic gothic horror lines, a jokey, spooky Goonies for the new millennium." He also gave it 4 out of 5 stars. Scott Bowles of USA Today observed, "The movie treats children with respect. Monster's pre-teens are sarcastic, think they're smarter than their parents and are going crazy over the opposite sex. Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle wrote, "It's engineered to scare your pants off, split your sides and squeeze your tear ducts into submission." Michael Medved called it "ingenious" and "slick, clever and funny" while also cautioning parents about letting small children see it due to its scary and intense nature, adding that a "PG-13 rating" would have been more appropriate than its "PG rating." A. O. Scott of the New York Times commented, "One of the spooky archetypes of childhood imagination — the dark, mysterious house across the street — is literally brought to life in “Monster House,” a marvelously creepy animated feature directed by Gil Kenan." Dissenting critics included Frank Lovece of Film Journal International, who praised director Gil Kenan as "a talent to watch" but berated the "internal logic that keeps changing.... DJ's parents are away, and the house doesn't turn monstrous in front of his teenage babysitter, Zee. But it does turn monstrous in front of her boyfriend, Bones. It doesn't turn monstrous in front of the town's two cops until, in another scene, it does." Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "Alert "Harry Potter" fans will notice the script shamelessly lifts the prime personality traits of J.K. Rowling's three most important young characters for its lead trio: Tall, dark-haired, serious-minded DJ is Harry, semi-dufus Chowder is Ron and their new cohort, smarty-pants prep school redhead Jenny (Spencer Locke), is Hermione.... It is a theme-park ride, with shocks and jolts provided with reliable regularity. Across 90 minutes, however, the experience is desensitizing and dispiriting and far too insistent." In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Animation Films list. Spin-offs A 56-page one-shot comic was released by IDW Publishing in June of 2006, featuring the character of Bones and his backstory leading up to and during the events of the film. Simeon Wilkins, a storyboard artist for the film, was credited as the artist and co-writer of the comic. A video game based on the film, titled Monster House, was released by THQ on July 18, 2006, for PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. Trivia * As of 2012, this is the only motion capture film to feature an entirely original story and not be based on existing source material. * For the German version of the film, Bones, Skull, and Chowder have been renamed "Punk," "Freak," and "Ketchup." * The first animated film to be made using Sony's animation rendering software. * The motto on the police car reads "We Wanna Help." * Homages to various Stephen King stories abound. The idea of a house that comes alive and eats people can be found in the third installment of King's "Dark Tower" series, "The Wastelands." And while in the house's basement, Chowder shines his flashlight on a mechanical monkey much like the one found in King's short story "The Monkey," collected in "Skeleton Crew." * The actors had to go through motion capture acting in order to animate the characters. The actors had to wear motion capture suits with little dots glued on their faces and a headpiece glued to their head with motion capture dots. After they took off their suits, the glue would cause irritation to their hair and scalp, but luckily they'd get a head massage with shampoo. * The film used 3D motion capture techniques to digitally record the physical performances of the actors before "skinning" them with their animated forms. * Jon Heder, who played Skull, broke his leg on the first day on set. * Mitchel Musso and Sam Lerner went to see Napoleon Dynamite (2004) before shooting; when they arrived on set they screamed and jumped on Jon Heder, who played Napoleon. * Monster house takes place in 1983 * The film is set in a city called Mayville, which is based on screenwriter Rob Schrab's hometown of Mayville, Wisconsin. * Chowders's line "DJ, you piss in bottles?" had to be re-dubbed "...you pee in bottles?" to help maintain a PG rating. You can still see Chowders's lips speak the original line. * There is a back story involving Skull (played by Jon Heder) and Bones (played by Jason Lee) being in an amateur heavy metal band. When we first meet Zee (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), she is wearing a top with "Skull 'n' Bones" written on, and later puts one of their cassette tapes on called "Live! at the Smell". She is also dating Bones in the movie. * Although never mentioned in dialog, signs, license plates, and the screenplay say the film takes place in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. * In the original screenplay, DJ and Chowder are harassed by two bullies named Ryan and Cameron who get eaten after DJ purposely lures them to the house as bait. The two characters were removed from the screenplay because the studio thought their death was far too dark, and that the bullies combined with DJ's cruel babysitter, boyfriend, and Nebbercracker all made the film seem much more cruel. * The second film to be released in REAL D's digital 3D format. * If you notice, skull grabs a pizza before heading out the door of the diner. It is plausible that he was delivering a pizza but stopped for video games. * During the opening leaf sequence, in the background can be seen the crane which is featured later in the film. * The tricycle scene at the beginning of the movie is a homage to Stanley Kubrick's film rendition of Stephen King's "The Shining." * The markers DJ used to draw the plan to taking out the house was from a store called "Sir Sniff-A-Lot". * Jason Lee's second animated film, after The Incredibles (2004). * It is never mentioned what the DJ initials stand for. Goofs * When the kids are in the back of the police car yelling at the police as they approach the house their voices are muffled as if completely enclosed in a car despite the front, driver-side window being open and a metal grate separating the front and back of the police car. * When DJ, Jenny and Chowder are jumping out of the back of the police car for safety, they're not wearing their water guns and they are nowhere to be seen. However, in the next scene, their guns are around their arms and ready for use. * The morning after Nebbercracker's departure, Zee's car is missing from the driveway. * The driver side on the police car switches between the two times it is seen. The first time it is shown as a normal car in the United States. When the police arrive to arrest the kids it pulls up onto the curb with driver side moved to the incorrect side. * In the beginning of the movie, when DJ wakes up from his nightmare, his phone is ringing. However, when DJ and Chowder run out to rescue Jenny, the ringtone is different. * The mask that Chowder wears at the beginning of the film disappears after DJ's parents run over it. * When Chowder sprays Jenny with water from his water gun in Nebbercracker's basement, the water mark disappears in the next shot of her which is just after a brief shot of DJ. The water could not have dried that quickly. * When Jenny goes to sell candy to the Monster House, DJ and Chowder run up and we see the "KEEP AWAY" sign on the left behind Jenny mostly covered by Chowder. Next shot the sign is less than three feet from her and in front of her. * Before DJ, Chowder and Jenny went to Nebbercracker's house to try out their dummy plan, the scene focuses on a picture DJ took, which is of the tree outside the house. When the scene changes and becomes real, it showed the three of them walking towards the house, which was on the right side of the screen. If DJ had taken the photo from his house, they should have been moving towards the other side where the house should have been. * When the kids are sneaking over to the house with the dummy, they are hiding in trash cans. It shows them walking as though the trash cans are on top of them; however, they then peek their heads out of the top of the trash cans. Unless the trash cans don't have bottoms, this wouldn't be possible. * Zee had plenty of time to see the house in its "monster" state when she opened the front door to tell Chowder he had a phone call. Category:Monster House